What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore.

[Apostol Paul's] views were translated as, "Your rule is to be kind to black people; you don't beat them." It's very much the way we treated women in the 14th and 15th centuries. A woman was not human, and you should be kind to your wife like you are to all dumb animals. That was the mentality.

Mother Nature is not sweet.

I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter.

I think the story of the Christian faith is how you can become more deeply and fully human, not how you can become religious. And I don't see any indication that being religious makes you more moral.

We are in a survival mentality, and that's hard-wired into our humanity, because we are the winners of an evolutionary struggle of millions and millions and millions of years.

The Bible Belt, the religious South, is the section of the country that practiced slavery until the war made them give it up. They practiced segregation. They practiced lynchings. I don't see any great value in that.